Bui Jones Books – förlag

What does Xi Jinping share with Mao Zedong? Why is Confucius still central to a communist state? What really happened in Tiananmen Square - and why is it still a taboo? In this accessible and politically astute primer, acclaimed historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom tackles the questions many are afraid to ask about China. Drawing on decades of research and first-hand experience in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, Wasserstrom offers clear, unflinching answers to topics often shrouded in cliche, censorship, or moral panic. From personality cults and protest movements to censorship, soft power, and trade wars, Everything You Wanted to Know About China (But Were Afraid to Ask) demystifies the People's Republic without exoticising it - offering a vital starting point for understanding one of the most powerful and misunderstood countries in the world. Structured as a series of conversational questions and answers - edited from an extended dialogue and reframed around key themes in History, Politics, and Culture - this is a necessary book for anyone seeking to cut through the noise.

At the helm of X, bankrolling far-right lawsuits, and parroting white nationalist conspiracy theories to millions, Elon Musk is no longer a tech eccentric with odd politics - he's the public face of the MAGA counter-revolution. Alongside Trump and the digital culture warriors of the new right, Musk is acting as both financier and foot soldier, reshaping the online public sphere in the image of a paranoid, hyper-capitalist backlash. He's not just posting through it - he's helping lead it. In this urgent and razor-sharp essay, award-winning journalist Richard Cooke dissects the political descent of Elon Musk: from self-described moderate to reactionary provocateur, from self-mythologised innovator to conspiracy peddler and chaos agent. With forensic clarity, Cooke exposes the roots of Musk's transformation - the mythology of genius, the libertarian cult of disruption, and the tech elite's growing comfort with authoritarianism. Dark Star Rising investigates how the richest man alive came to dominate what was once the digital town square - and what it means when that square is turned into a plaything of the paranoid elite. As Cooke reveals, Musk's trajectory is not an anomaly but a warning: when billionaires cosplay as rebels and monopolise the means of communication, democracy itself hangs in the balance. Dark Star Rising is searing account of the political devolution of Elon Musk - and what it reveals about the tech elite's descent into far-right reaction.

Written across fall and winter 2023, Autumnal is a daily reckoning with memory, exile, and devotion. Burmese-Chin poet Aidii composes from a life lived between the Chin hills, Yangon, and Indianapolis - a city now known as 'Chindianapolis,' home to the largest Chin community outside Myanmar. / A poem a day, through falling leaves and deepening snow. / Her poems carry the hymnal pulse of tradition and the raw nerve of modern displacement. Like Emily Dickinson, whose disciplined practice she echoes, Aidii draws beauty and gravity from compressed forms. But hers is also a voice shaped by migration, single motherhood, diasporic resistance, and survivor guilt. / I need 314 hours a day / to be able to sleep sufficiently, / to play with my child, to make home. / Translated with care and poetic intuition by ko ko thett, Autumnal is a first-of-its- kind English-language collection from a Burmese woman poet writing on motherhood, faith, exile, and the brutal generosity of memory. This is poetry as lifeline, confession, and a bridge between cultures and memory.

Kitty and her teenage friends, squatting in an empty apartment, are looking for gas to cook instant noodles. Bai Song and his wife, who live in the unit across the hallway, have a well-equipped kitchen with all the mod cons. Plus they're old and retired, meaning they're ripe for a bit of rough fun, Clockwork Orange-style. China at the turn of the century. Everything is upside down. Respect for your elders? You've got be joking. Communism? Yeah right. Cut-throat capitalism is the only way to get ahead. 'To get rich is glorious'. In ten wonderfully surreal stories, Anne Stevenson-Yang conjures up the atmosphere of a society in freefall. China as you've never imagined it: a wife who fakes her divorce so she can buy an apartment; neglected teens who tie up an elderly couple so they can use their kitchen; a country girl who poisons a disabled man for a residence permit. Living in China for nearly twenty-five years, Stevenson-Yang became fascinated in the 'muffled violence beneath the placid surface'. 'It seems that the more a culture values traditional social structures, the more it accepts the aggression that inevitably lurks beneath the surface. Self-abnegation and hidden violence are two key themes of these stories. The third is the freeing and yet corrosive effect of money. The last few decades have confronted the people of China with tremendous upheaval, new opportunities, naked exploitation, and a new brand of brutality that derives from anonymity.'

The extraordinary story of China's spectacular but ultimately short-lived attempt to transform its society through Western-style capitalism. Drawing on four decades of experience living and working in China - from the roaring '80s when it first opened to the world to the rise of Xi Jinping and the advent of Covid-19 when the Communist country shut down. Anne Stevenson-Yang tells a frank and timely account of the Chinese Communist Party's attempts to cling onto power first through market liberalisation, then total control at every level of society. Wild Ride is a sobering reminder of the reality of communist China, that under all the veneer of economic growth is a repressive system bent on authoritarian power.

Hong Kong, 2019. Communist China wants to bring the former British colony under its control. The people of Hong Kong - used to the freewheeling democracy that has made it Asia's financial capital - take to the streets to protest. The stage is set for one of the most dramatic political showdowns since Tiananmen Square. Liberate Hong Kong takes readers to the heart of the protest movement in Hong Kong. It tells the stories of the people of Hong Kong - the shopkeepers, musicians, young radicals to middle-aged moderates - who have led the way in demanding universal suffrage and freedom from control by the Chinese Communist Party.

Poison - invisible, unknown, hard to detect and deadly - taps into hard-wired anxieties about the risks of the world around us. From ancient times to the modern age, it has always created more fear than any other threats. In A Basilisk Glance: Poisoners from Plato to Putin, author Robert Templer takes us through the dark maze of poison. He traces its path from when Hercules dipped his arrows in the blood from the severed head of the Hydra to the use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War in 1980s, from the death of Socrates to the use of toxins as a weapon of assassination, from the mass suicide of Jonestown in 1979 to the sarin attack in the Tokyo metro system. Today, as the war in Ukraine rages, we are reminded of the use of radioactive and nerve weapons by Russian President Vladimir Putin to kill his opponents. His targets - like other victims of poison through the ages - know that they are never safe; a cup of tea, a door handle or even their own underwear might be tainted with a deadly toxin. In this panoramic survey, Templer also shows how history is littered with the bodies of those killed for poisoning or being seen as poisonous. Pogroms against Jews, the burning of witches and the murder of slaves are extreme expressions of the fear that came from the lack of understanding of the risks of poison. A Basilisk Glance brings together scientific, cultural and social history to explore the meaning of poison through the ages. It examines how this fear - real and imagined - took hold, how it has maintained a grip on everyone from the most powerful figures of history to the poorest on the planet, and how it persists today.

The rise of Hong Kong is the story of a miraculous post-War boom, when Chinese refugees flocked to a small British colony, and, in less than 50 years, transformed it into one of the great financial centres of the world. The unravelling of Hong Kong, on the other hand, shatters the grand illusion of China ever having the intention of allowing democratic norms to take root inside its borders. Hong Kong's people were subjects of the British Empire for more than a hundred years, and now seem destined to remain the subordinates of today's greatest rising power. Although we have witnessed the end of the mass protests that rocked Hong Kong in 2019-20, the political struggle for Hong Kong continues to be one of the biggest challenges to China's authoritarianism in 30 years. Activists who are passionately committed to defending the special qualities of a home they love continue to fight against Beijing's crafty efforts to bring the city into its fold and erase its recent past. Jeffrey Wasserstrom, one of the world's leading China specialists, draws on his many visits to the city, and knowledge of the history of repression and resistance, to help us understand the deep roots and the broad significance of the large protests that took place in Hong Kong five years go. The result is a riveting tale of tragedy but also heroism - one of the great David-versus- Goliath battles of our time, pitting determined street protesters against the intransigence of Xi Jinping, the most ambitious leader of China since the days of Mao.

Fifty years ago, when the longest and most unpopular war in American history finally ended, Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was left traumatised by the conflict and cut off from the world. This was a cruel fate for a city that had in its short mercurial history blossomed on the back of US military spending and international trade. Boatloads of Vietnamese, fearing their future under the rule of the Communist party, took their chances on the seas, never imagining they would ever wish to return. And through the 1980s, not even the Saigonese could have imagined the city's re-emergence as a rapidly growing financial powerhouse in the 21st century. But for the last three decades overseas Vietnamese of all ages have been flocking back to what has become one of the fastest growing cities in Southeast Asia. They're not alone. Today Ho Chi Minh City, renamed in 1976 in honour of Vietnam's founding father, is a pulsating and multicultural hub that is welcoming the world (yes, American investors included). Its powering economy and vibrant start-up culture are undoubtedly part of the attraction for Generations X, Y and Z. But more than anything, it's the city's age-old hospitality, its glorious food offerings and fun-loving social scene, and the seductive Saigonese way of life that wins everyone over. Even fans of its northern rival Hanoi can't resist the lure of the southern hub, the writer of this collection included. In these 10 essays, Dublin-born Connla Stokes, who has spent a quarter of a century in Vietnam, describes a heaving city where locals and residents bask in the low-key wonder of their surroundings, and where food and drink, above everything else, brings one and all together, day after day, night after night. Follow Connla into the back alleys and side streets of a metropolis that, at first glance, never seems to catch its breath. Learn how to love the rainy season, why locals love to nhau (feasting and drinking for no particular purpose) and kill time in one of the city's countless cafes. Discover the pleasure of slinking your way through a typical Saigonese neighbourhood or following a dimly lit staircase in a crumbling modernist apartment block to find a svelte speakeasy or rooftop taproom. And feel the heartache of falling for the heritage of yesteryear, which is slowly being razed to make way for modern developments in a city that many believe will soon be a megalopolis. But fear not, even though Ho Chi Minh City is already home to over 10 million people, and nearly as many motorbikes, you can still find oodles of 'old Saigon' flavour - away from the glitzy rooftop bars, and shimmering high-rises, the city's timeless charm endures and its residents' love of life prevails. These poignant essays are a reminder that the time to go to it, and fall for it, is now.